Introduction
Rev Claudius Buchanan DD FRSE (12 March 1766 – 9 February 1815) was a Scottish theologian, an ordained minister of the Church of England, and an evangelical missionary for the Church Missionary Society. He served as Vice Provost of the College of Calcutta in India.
Early life
Claudius Buchanan was born in Cambuslang near Glasgow. His father, Alexander Buchanan, was the local schoolmaster in Inverary.
He was educated at the University of Glasgow and the Queens' College, Cambridge. He was ordained in 1795 by the Bishop of London.
India
After holding a chaplaincy in India at Barrackpur (1797–1799), Buchanan was appointed Calcutta chaplain and vice-principal of the college of Fort William. In this capacity he did much to advance Christianity and native education in India, especially by organizing systematic translations of the scriptures.
During a visit to Malabar in 1806, present day South-western state of Kerala, Dr. Buchanan visited Mar Thoma VI, head of the Malankara Church at Angamali, near Kochi. Mar Thoma was very happy to hear Buchanan’s intention of translating the Bible into Malayalam, the local language, and he presented a Syriac Bible said to be of some antiquity to Buchanan. The Bible was subsequently deposited among the Oriental Manuscripts in the public library of the University of Cambridge.
In January 1806, Buchanan was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh.
He died in Broxbourne in Herefordshire in 1815 where he was superintending an edition of the Syriac Scriptures (c.f. his extensive memorial inscription).
He is buried, along with his wife Mary and two infant children, in the churchyard of Holy Trinity, Little Ouseburn, North Yorkshire and his residence, Moat Hall, is adjacent to the Church.
Works
Translation of the Bible
Two of the Syriac scholars, Kayamkulam Philipose Ramban and Pulikottil Ramban of Malankara Syrian Orthodox Church, assisted by Subbayya Pillay translated the four Gospels from a very old manuscript written in Estrangelo Syriac. Dr. Buchanan took the initiative to take this Malaylam translation of the Bible to Bombay and get it printed.
Books published
An account of his travels in the south and west of India, which added considerably to our knowledge of nature life, is given in his Christian Researches in Asia (Cambridge, 1811). After his return to the United Kingdom in 1808, he still took an active part in matters connected with India, and by his book entitled Colonial Ecclesiastical Establishment (London, 1813), he assisted in settling the controversy of 1813, which eventually ended in the establishment of an Anglican Indian episcopate in 1878 in the Travancore-Cochin states. This Church known as CMS Church merged with other Churches in South India on 27 September 1947 to form The Church of south India (CSI).